


The World on a String

by entanglednow



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Captivity, M/M, Rescue, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-23
Updated: 2010-08-23
Packaged: 2017-10-14 12:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are people we break all the rules for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World on a String

John isn't sure how long he's spent tied to the chair. He doesn’t have Sherlock's strangely precise awareness of time. The blindfold is too thick to see through, so he can't even try and work it out from possible light sources.

He's going to go with the rather unscientific guess of 'a while.'

He's certainly been here long enough for his arms and legs to go numb, and for his lip to stop bleeding. Though he can't stop reflexively poking at it with his tongue. His loudest and most annoying captor had decided to prove that hitting someone with a gun is a lot messier in real life than it always looks on TV.

John doesn't know who has him, or why, but he knows that there are four of them, and he knows that none of these men are in charge. He knows - or he's fairly sure at least - that they're going to kill him, eventually.

It's just a matter of time.

Whoever tied the ropes was good and John knows he's going to achieve nothing struggling against them but to tear most of the skin off his wrists. It'd be a long and painful while after that before he could even try and slip the messy wreck of them free. He's been working the ropes back and forth anyway, the slow painful scrape-burn of it. Because he's not a man that can just sit here and do nothing.

The others have gone, somewhere. But he knows one of them is still outside, he can hear him pacing back and forth, twelve steps one way, scratching turn on gravel, twelve steps the other. Occasionally he'll stop and there'll be a harder, shuffling scrape that suggests he's crushing a cigarette butt. John's not quite sure how that's supposed to help him though.

He's been listening to the pacing for so long that when it stops the silence is stark.

He tenses, wrists going still, waiting for the door to open again, waiting for the man to come back inside.

The door clicks open slowly and John isn't sure if this is it, if this is exactly when and how it will happen. But he works on the assumption that it isn't, that he will not allow it to be, because any other way madness lies.

And then there are narrow fingers sliding between the blindfold and his hair, cold against his scalp. He tries to flinch away from them, instinctively. But they've already pulled the cloth free and it's suddenly painfully bright, senses going mad all at once.

When the light clears enough he's blinking at Sherlock's ridiculous face, all pale colours and angles and _brilliance_. He looses all the air in his lungs on a name, dragged out, something too big and too sharp to be relief underneath them.

"You took your time," he says faintly, and the words make his mouth hurt, but they're worth it for that flash of expression that manages to be exasperated, irritated and relieved all at the same time.

It's an entertaining mess. Like Sherlock's face doesn't know what to do with it all.

It shouldn't be so comforting. But John's suddenly laughing and Sherlock's just close enough that he can lean his head forward until he's mostly laughing into Sherlock's hair.

"You're going to have to work on this habit you have of being abducted, John." Only Sherlock can be chastising and something close to apologetic at the same time.

"I don't do it on purpose to surprise you, you realise that?"

"Things would be much easier if -"

"You're not fitting me with GPS," John says, and it probably won't be the last time he says it either.

Sherlock huffs in a frustrated sort of way, like he knows all he has to do is find exactly the right argument to change John's mind.

When he leans in to unpick the ropes tying his ankles to the chair John can see down the side of his collar. There are two dotted lines of blood up his throat and across his ear, disappearing into Sherlock's hair. John's been around him long enough to recognise a cast-off pattern when he sees one.

It occurs to him that it can't always be easy, or clean, even for Sherlock. That sometimes the only way to get anywhere is with brute force.

John thinks Sherlock is capable of absolutely anything, if he deems it necessary.

When Sherlock sets to work on the ropes holding his wrists together, his fingers are tacky at the ends. Tacky in a way that's going to leave red fingerprints up John's wrists and dotted along the wool of his jumper.

He already knows Sherlock isn't going to tell him whose blood it is.

John doesn't know what Sherlock did to find him.

He doesn't ask.

  



End file.
